Slashdot Mirror
The Optimus Mini Keyboard
Zugok writes "We all remember the Optimus Keyboard from last year. Now Art Lebedev and his team have designed the Optimus Mini Three keyboard. The 'Mini Three' builds on the idea of those extraneous keys on modern Logitech and Microsoft Keyboards but like the Optimus Keyboard utilises OLED technology for visual customisation of keys.
This is not vapourware, pre-orders are being take now with a cut price until April 2nd. This is just a step closer to the Optimus Keyboard. They also have a mailing list for those who want to keep up with developments of the Optimus Keyboard. Happy salivating!" This is a far cry from the full keyboard, but it's still pretty nifty. Assuming it actually does ship.
Is there any way this could possibly be cost effective? I couldn't imagine what this may cost.
But is it functional? I wonder to myself, "what will I put on those keys?" Pretty much just things that normally are an Alt-Click away anyways. I don't expect the keyboard of being able to handle serious macros, or anything.
Slashdotted before the first comment ... or did they get a heads up and blokked all traffic that came from /. :)
-Mark
We all remember the Optimus Keyboard from last year.
No we don't care to remember dupe slashvertisments and that's why that link is slashdotted.
Just don't do it on your new keyboard, they are already disgusting enough, thanks!
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Hope their keyboards are better than their web servers! Even mirrordot didn't catch a good mirror of the images. bummer...
Sadly many projects which have never appeared have also taken pre-orderes.
So this "justification" doesn't amount to very much. I'd love to have a look at the prices, but sadly the site is down so I can't.
I know what I'm mapping my three keys to: CTRL, ALT, and DEL
This guy's the limit!
That they are taking 'pre-orders' means what exactly?
The site is crawling now so I can't see what the price of this might be. The full keyboard would be an interesting device as my wife uses a cyrillic layout quite often and just types from memory. It would be nice to be able to switch the keys from cyrillic to latin, or even dvorak to qwerty.
Auron may be different, Cally, but on Earth it is considered ill-mannered to kill your friends while committing suicide.
I think that for personal use, this is pretty much nothing but eye-candy. However, I can see some pretty decent commercial uses (note not necessarily in it's current configuration). Keyboards that are able to adapt to the application their running in a kiosk environment (where the core qwerty keys remain fixed, but the others change as needed) for example. One BIG use would be ..... the keyboard as a display. Imagine one of these keyboards in a kiosk where it's actually displaying content as it treats the keys as a miniature multi-segmented display. It would be quite catchy and you could drive a significant bit of content through it. Picture the main interface display being the keyboard (say something simple like some type of ATM), with the standard display containing other information, or perhaps a "guide", or showing more details.
Well, news was spreading quickly through Digg and elsewhere hours before this story was posted.
I don't know where you got that $300 figure from. If you're extrapolating it directly up, it'd be $4000; but Art Lebedev are still claiming that it will cost "Less than a decent mobile phone"; which would then give you $300. Did I just argue myself in circles? ^^
But, for people interested in getting the full keyboard, I can't see any of them forking out an extra $100 for these 3 keys; which don't have the greatest of practical applications.
tell us who can withstand the /. effect
For the under-educated fast food worker, you could put pictures of burgers, fries, and shakes on the keys.
Getting them to correctly make change, OTOH, is beyond what the technology in the keyboard can offer.
Chip H.
the mirror is slashdotted too.. :P ..
anyway.. isn't it a bit suspicious that orders are taken with a cut price untill April 2:nd???... Hmmm... /me ponders
Why can't they make this in a "natural" version? I'd actually consider it then.
/rude /chicken and /spit in WoW?
I can't type on a regular keyboard to save my life anymore.
Do the three keys add additional functionality, or are they just mappings of other keys on the keyboard? I mean, who wouldn't want an extra three keys for
"The keyboard is in production. The first lot is set to arrive on May 15. Retail price of Optimus mini three is $100 (subject to change after April 2).
The keyboard will be available for pre-order this week."
So, I guess, the question remains where did $300 amount come from?I don't know about you but anytime someone tells me something is NOT vaporware and that they're taking pre-orders I assume one thing immediately. It's vaporware :-P
That's "Piece of History" pricing right there. It sounds like they need the cash in order to make it through to production of the full keyboard. So they took a prototype, sized it down to something they could afford to manufacture and finished the software they need to make it work. They can use this piece to test the market and work out any problems in their manufacturing process. Sounds like a really good move to me.
Does it transform into a red semi-truck?
For those complaining about the site being down without a mirror of a picture.... a little googling does help
SMASH-dotted...there's smoke rolling off of a server in a datacenter somewhere.
This is not vaporware? Preorders are being taken? Thats a qualification for not being vaporware? Hell, weren't they taking preorders on that little gaming system called the Infinivap...Infinisteam...Infini...hell, are you a schill for the company? Is this the new PR engine?
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
I use so many different keyboards over the year and I wish the industry had a different label for each layout design. Some have large backspace keys with small enter keys, others have tiny backspace keys with mammoth enter keys. I think I've seen 3 or 4 layouts over time, which is crazy considering that typing becomes more efficient if the keys are in the same place. I figure the best way to get manufacturers to conform a little better is to name the layouts, and once you have your preference, you'll tend to buying the ones you're familiar with. That way manufacturers can see what consumers want and don't want. I'm sure there is a market for different layouts, but it frustrates me when I can't recall what keyboard I am used to without actually buying a new one and then finding out a day later that I'm used to a different sized "any" key.
Don't people find this type of interface confusing? In my experience, people that use MS Office products seriously dislike the 'feature' that hides inappropriate menu items, and much prefer to see them grayed out if that particular selection is not appropriate. The users I have talked to usually say "Where the $#^% did that selection go?!?". I would think that keys that change meaning would also lead to a similar confusion. Anyone actually use one of these keyboards?
I for one welcome our new [insert main topic] overlords.
They don't get your money until the thing ships. What pre-orders CAN do, is give them a somewhat accurate guage of demand, which can help them negotiate volume discounts with the component suppliers, and help them secure loans. But they don't get money from the pre-orders, they can't charge your credit card until the product ships, it's illegal.
perhaps they need to remove the big graphics on that page?
at first I thought it was a video load or something..
then realized it was a display graphic of some girls (who are those girls?)
seems they just restarted the server, don't think they quite know yet they are slashdotted.
anime+manga together at last.. in real time.
What kind of 'they can't charge your card until product ships' crap are you spewing. Video games stores take pre-orders every day. Sears and Tweeter charge you TODAY for the TV that's shipping next week. There's no law that says receipt of good or shipment of goods must take place before charging can.
Now, if they fail to deliver the product EVER, that's a crime.
Reason, free market capitalism, and individualism
Ladies and gentlemen,
.
I'm delighted to inform you that we are rolling out the Optimus mini three
keyboard.
Details with images are available at http://www.artlebedev.com/portfolio/optimus-mini/
It's a three-key keyboard with big color OLED screens. The price of the
keyboard is $100 until April 2, 2006. We are looking forward to receiving a
fresh lot of the keyboards ready for shipment on May 15. We are planning to
give you the opportunity to pre-order the keyboard at our online store this
week.
P. S. As regards the full-fledged Optimus keyboard, we still expect to
obtain its samples by the end of this year. Production is slated for next
year. But before that, we are planning to make another model, of which you
will be immediately notified.
Artemy Lebedev
From the FAQ, the expected lifetime of these displays is 5000 hours. That's a little over 200 days. Even with a "key saver", this severly impacts the usable lifetime of this device. I'm as excited about this keyboard as anybody else, but I think I may have to wait until people have had one on their desk for a year to see if I'm going to plunk down a significant amount of coin to buy one.
I wouldn't buy it to actually *press* the keys. I'd be more interested in programming the displays to show something useful. That would be pretty cool.
The 3,5 and 7 keys, making this my optimus prime keyboard.
I'm so sad.
When the posters fear their moderators, there is tyranny; when the moderators fears the posters, there is liberty.
not going to be able to host these for long, but since the site is slow as tar:
http://www.ringdev.com/images/3Button.jpg
http://www.ringdev.com/images/optimus-mini-34.jpg
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
People need to realize that sites aren't generally that terrible. By the time the site's posted on Slashdot, it's been posted at five different other places.
This whole discussion of cost came up on one tech forum when they last released plans to sell the full keyboard.
They said then the famous "as much as a good cell phone", which could be what? Some people are happy with the $50 phones, but the latest PDA-style computer with mobile service? That could be near $1000.
So how about this:
A few of us looked around, and the cheapest backlit OLED displays we could find for sale were displays for cell-phones, and each display cost roughly $75 (for the cheaper ones, in bulk). Those displays were big enough for about six keys. Bulk isn't OEM pricing of course, but that would figure to around $12 per key (for a 32 x 32-pixel display only).
Now even if you are willing to cut that cost estimate in half, that still means that these displays would cost roughly $5 per key. For around a hundred keys, that's $500 alone. OLEDs certainly will get cheaper over time and this may take them a year to get together, but they won't get that much cheaper. By far the main products they are used for is mobile phone displays.
Plus there's a good-sized piece of work underneath to run the pretty pictures. I'd be very surprised if they could get this thing out for less than $500-$600. There are other companies that produce customised-key boards of the normal type (just with different physical key shapes and positions) and they get $200-$300 for those.
~
I think this could be a really interesting way to optimize keyboard sizes.
OK, with the given 3-key keyboard, one has up to 8 possible modes, with [0,0,0] being the default mode with which no action is assigned. With a 2-key chording configuration, one can generate 6 distinct modes: 0+1, 0+2, 1+0, 1+2, 2+0, 2+1. With 1-key chording configuration, one can generate only 3 distinct modes: 0, 1, 2. Three-key chording would provide the same result as two key chording (for obvious reasons.)
Suppose this chording were applied to a full size keyboard? On my mac, when using the "Keyboard Viewer" (as I sometimes do for international characters), depressing the shift and option keys updates the display with the new possible outputs. What if this were applied to a normal keyboard, to generate an easier to learn full size keyboard? Or a keyboard with easily accessed international character sets? Or with a modal key that can be depressed to make every key into a hot key, with, perhaps, an icon associated with each key and with each action?
The applicability of this is extensive, but the lifetime and framerate (and presumably response time) leaves something to be desired.
My only question: Where is the API?
When I saw Optimus, I must admit the first thought that popped into my mind was Optimus Prime and I thought of the vast possibilities of a keyboard which could do so much more.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
This seems a little slim to me. I'm not up on the expected lifetime of OLED tech but I hope it has a nifty sleep function. Because 5000 is just over 200 days of contiuous use. How many of us keep our computers running all the time....
no sig yet
I wasn't going to post this, but since their website seems to be under too much of a load... I actually interviewed Artemy and published preview with all the details on the site (and then some) plus plenty of pictures.
Do Not Eat iPod Shuffle
It's possible to configure Optimus mini to display additional functions with modifier keys (Ctrl, Alt, Shift) pressed and held on a "regular" keyboard. So instead of three screens, the user will in fact have an infinite number of them./quote?
I still have 3 screens! That's some great logic.
It does seem a bit steep ($100), but I really like the idea. It may be more useful with something like a dozen keys.
I'd bet the $100 tag on these is to help get the full sized Optimus to market.
qwe qwewwq qwweew qwwqqe wwqew wwwww qqq qwe eee ewe...had to switch back to my non-optimus keyboard. I just can't spell the words with 3 keys...sigh...
Then, you pack up and make the order ready for shipment. When you have the stuff assembled in a box and ready to ship to the customer, you "capture" the payment. This is when you actually get the money, and things can fail at this point too (e.g, if the card had been stolen.)
Capturing the money before you're shipping the order is definately against the agreements used - I'm not sure if it is illegal or not.
There's also some maximum amount of time you can keep the funds reserved - I think this vary by agreement, too.
So, you don't get the money until you're shipping the order, unless you use a factoring company or similar. A factoring company (usually) lends you money against the right to collect on your bills, and cancels the debt as the bills are paid. They're often also collection agencies, and they're normally in the black, so they can grab tax credits for losses etc - thus making the bills more worth to them than to you.
Eivind.
Doubting the existence of evolution is like doubting the existence of China: It just shows that you're uninformed.
3 keys, real useful. If anything, I want MORE keys, not less. How could I even pick what to make those three keys? And what am I going to push that I won't then need a normal keyboard or mouse for anyway. Lets think about this for a second:
1). Program Launcher: I can map the keys to programs I often load, like winamp, firefox, instant messenger, email, oh crap, I've already gone over my quota of THREE. Not even the elderly in Korea limit themselves to only three programs!
2). Multimedia Keys / Remote: I can use this to remote control my media player! I'll map things like volume up, volume down, mute, play/pause, next track, previous track. Oh wait, that's right, > 3 functions.
3). Game Controller: Forget it, the friggin atari 2600 had a directional joystick and a single button and it was more useful than this!
... A Star Trek style keyboard. One big touch screen that has the ability to not only map buttons but make them any size, shape, and in any position. Even put video displays and the such. Now THAT would be great, especially for games. Keep weapons and inventory on the keyboard and to switch you could just tap the item itself as opposed to using the on screen menu and weapons groups that can be very inconvenient in the heat of battle.
Better yet keyboard accessories...why clutter up the screen with widgets, gadgets or Desktop accessories? Just send them to the keyboard display. It would be great for things like calculators, toys and meters (Power, CPU, RAM, Network).
I would buy that! (For a reasonable price)
Slow Down Cowboy! It's been 1 hour, 47 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment
http://artlebedev.com.nyud.net:8090/portfolio/opti mus/i mus-mini/
;-)
http://artlebedev.com.nyud.net:8090/portfolio/opt
Would be nice if the editors placed the Coral Cache links right away
Join the anonymous, help develop the network: http://www.i2p2.de
Before you order, make sure you know exactly what you order. Those three keys are BIG, 32×32 mm. That's bigger than my "Enter" key. With that size, I'd rather use it for various display purposes instead of the intended "key" functionality.
Actually that site is Digg'd not /.'d.
I was trying to look earlier today.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
fresh vapourware in the morning. Come on - this is a scam. If it isn't a scam than at a minimum it won't be as good as the pictures they are currently showing. The display will fail within a year, the keys will be heavy and nasty and the API will suck.
OLED technology just isn't good enough for this to be viable yet. Maybe, if you were NASA, you could get this keyboard to work but then howmany of us have unlimited piles of cash? To anyone that does happen to have piles of cash to burn please send some my way - thanks.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
Quick, lets all rush up to the store BEFORE april first.......
I have this bad feeling inside that this will only work in Windows...
Ryan - http://www.thecosmotron.com/
http://artlebedev.com/portfolio/
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
If I were them, I would make all the keys in black and white, and only add a row of shortcut keys in color. It would still be incredibly cool (and very useful, if done right), and it would probably keep the cost low enough for it to sell.
I'm pretty sure that, if I thought about that just after reading your comment, someone at their company has had the same idea.
It would be interesting to know what would be the cost estimates for such a keyboard (b/w), though.
Not getting as much traffic as I feared, so these should stay up.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
I tell you what I miss on some of those new keyboards ..... the "insert" key. There seem to be quite a few keyboard around with just a double-size "delete" key where "insert" and "delete" should be. This mucks up keyboard copy and paste {ctrl+insert and shift+insert} and also makes it harder to use links {insert and delete are used to scroll up and down by lines}.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
This would be great if you could map these keys for each online poker site to correspond to Fold-Call-Raise. Then you could be sitting there Alt-Tabbing between windows and not having to use the mouse to find those buttons.
Make a version with a long-life OLED colour (not 5000 hours because of the blue) monochrome display.
... well, that might be mouldy cake between the keys.
Looking at my keyboard, woo, look, black on white. No reds, purples, greens
I'm sure that monochrome would be cheaper for a start, require less bandwidth to update, and for keyboard uses, just as useful.
Currently it is three pressable displays.
Stick a 64x64 monochrome/greyscale OLED into a key-sized key, and make a keyboard from that. Leave the full colour version until the technology is better - both on the OLED side and on the keyboards with display side.
I've finally found the Any Keys! Hooray!
Hey, guys, April fools is in two months!
In all seriousness, I'm curious what anyone would do with a keyboard that has only three keys on it. And who would buy it for $100?
It might be useful for embedded applications, like some mall kiosk where you push buttons to get through a menu. But it's still a bit pricy and short on keys.
get this thing out for less than $500-$600
Sounds good. Where can I get one?
Seriously, the thought of having each key what it's current action is is intoxicating. Imagine pressing the CTRL key, and having all the key caps show their CTRL-? action.
So the key C would show "COPY" when CTRL is pressed (for a text editor) or "Break" if at the command line.
- - - - - - - - - - -
I am a programmer. I am paid to produce syntax not grammar. Deal with it.
According to the site when it was up (and posts on the previous /. article), it's a "soft touch" design with "membrane technology". Ugh.
The IBM Model M rules. And Dell "Bigfoot" AT101. Fujitsu KB4720 / 4725. A few others. Heavy-duty mechanical switches; seriously clicky; a pleasure to type on. The only kind of keyboard worth having.
/"Forty rods to the hogshead and that's the way I like it!"
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This interview with Artemy Lebedev by Primotech shows some rendered pictures I hadn't seen on other sites as well as a picture of what looks to be a prototype.
Dewey, you fool! Your decimal system has played right into my hands!
"The keyboard is in production. The first lot is set to arrive on May 15. Retail price of Optimus mini three is $100 (subject to change after April 2).
The keyboard will be available for pre-order this week."
A post a day keeps productivity at bay.
Wow, a bunch of Russians offering "pre-orders" on a product to be released at the end of the year at an unspecified time. No, that can't possibly be a scam.
Hint: Russians are filthy lying drunken chain-smoking con artists, practically from birth.
What kind of 'they can't charge your card until product ships' crap are you spewing.
According to this FTC article, "Many credit card issuers have policies against merchants charging a credit card account before shipment" and "By law, a merchant should ship your order within the time stated in its ads or over the phone. If the merchant doesn't promise a time, you can expect it to ship your order within 30 days."
Isn't optimus a RadioShack brand name for audio equipment? Or at least it used to be.
"He's lost in a 'floyd hole"
How the hell is a mirror of a Slashdotted link offtopic???? I'm getting sick of the blatant stupidity on Slashdot!
would be an extension with 7-8 long keys duplicating taskbar buttons, so that I don't have to Alt+Tab anymore. This extension would be located where palm rest normally is. The keys would be slightly sunk to avoid pressing them by accident.
I hope they don't pull the same trick as Fingerworks and go out of business without leaving behind an open source interface. I have two iGesture mouse touch pads that can't be configured because the configuration software doesn't run on the 2.6 kernel.
I want to use the full keyboard for Chinese. It is the ultimate solution.
Brian
--
http://skewray.com/
Yes, but will it run Goobuntu?
games journalism blog
Why on earth would you want something so limited? Three separate buttons, three separate OLEDS, limited product lifetime, and a cable probably as big as the device to boot... why not just have a nice mini touch-screen interfaced through bt which can be versatile enough to use the whole display if necessary and could also be thinner? am i on the right track?
The OLED mini-screens seem like a poor choice for this, given the fact that these will presumably be used as easily-changed labels, rather than dynamic minidisplay screens. If you only need to change them once in a while, wouldn't electronic ink displays be better suited to this task? Even LCD would be more appropriate, except that they would be a constant power draw.
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. - Mark Twain
Would make an interesting front panel display and input for a sonething like a MythTV box.
Although only 3 keys makes it pretty hard to work with.
I would think one big display with either 4 buttons around it for navigation plus 1 to 3 action buttons would be better.
Maybe you could implement it as one big button that you can push down the sides of for navigation (similar to a gamepad). Then have some action buttons along the bottom.
Not really. The way it works is you request authorization the day of the sale for access for $x. The money is no longer available on the purchasers card. Then at COB (close of Business) the card companies send end of day results. The Transaction has now POSTED, and cannot be voided, but only returned. (which means, if you cancel a sale same day, you won't see it on your card, its as if the transaction never happened. If you cancel the next day, you will see two transactions, the original, and a credit transaction to balance it out.) Effectively, you are billed at COB that day for the product, whether you received it or not. Do credit card companies have security and fraud procedures in place to stop payment after the fact? Yes. Does the merchant account get the money at COB? No, most merchant accounts get the money at the end of the month . Can charges be disputed? Absolutely. But after the Close Of Business, you are CHARGED, which means you owe VISA $x and VISA has promised to deliver $x - VISA's take to the merchant account of the retailer.
Working at Sears on comission for a year after college made me learn all this, because people sometimes order TVs or electronics to be delivered after the date of renovations, but want to lock in ZERO FINANCING or some sort of sale.
Reason, free market capitalism, and individualism
Ah, so what you want is an Apricot PC with a 2x40 character LCD display (scroll down) from 1983.
This was my first experience with PCs; my dad had one, issued to lecturers by Wolverhampton University. British built by Brummies, fact fans. Just like those lovely Mini cars. Bostin'!
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
I'm thinking. Their "cut/special" pre-order price for a three key keyboard is $100. For a standard 104 key keyboard, the price would then be $3466 if it's the OLED keys that drive the price.
Granted, it's probably cheaper to produce a larger amount, but then again the complexity increases, and the number of production faults will increase, eating up that advantage. And remember that the $100 for three keys is a "cut" price.
If they get the full size Optimus keyboard out the door, I predict it will not be at a price range for mere mortals. It may not be $3500, but it certainly won't be $200 either. If it ends up costing less than $1000, I'll eat my, um, vegetables.
Regards,
--
*Art
I was excited about the keys when I first took a look at the promo pictures. After looking at the real items shots, the promo pictures are heavily photoshopped. The color range and resolution displayed by the promo pictures are misleading. This should not be allowed at all as a common business practice.
Not worth my money.
Does anyone use one of these http://www.iwantoneofthose.com/search.do?productCo de=PROKEY ?Are they ok for real work or just some half assed toy?
I know it's verboten to bitch about this, but I submitted this story yesterday, before Zugok did, and it got rejected. I'm 0 and 7 for submissions thanks to these jerky editors. Anyway, old news, Digg had it yesterday morning and Art Lebedev emailed all the list subscribers yesterday afternoon as well.
Seems like an interesting concept but like the Wankel engine in the 50's and 60's, the technology to make it work properly just isn't there yet. The measley lifetime of the OLEDs is laughable...I mean come on, who wants a 'screen saver' for the keys on their keyboard? This will be one of the premium items for a handful of first adopters, and hopefully they'll eat the development costs for the good model, probably due out next year or the year after.
If I were Lebedev, I'd just sell the design rights or license the tech to other companies like Logitech that build peripherals like crazy, sit back and collect the royalties and let someone else worry about developing product and getting it distributed. After all, they are a design house. You don't see Porsche F.A. building their own coffee machines or laptops.
Cool web page! The market quotes seem to be live data -- at least they're accurate for today.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
...because, this here can be more accurately described as "shit". The OLED lasts for 7 months of use, but that's besides the point - anyone would get bored much sooner with a three-button glorified app launcher which takes up your desk space and uses energy to give you what ctrl+anythreekeys already can. It's eye candy and could be a nice thing tied to some child-education apps learning toddlers to identify cows and bananas (if the buttons were bigger), but for $100?
The true programmer's keyboard only needs 3 keys: 1, 0, and backspace (and the old types will tell you you don't need the backspace).
- sig? who is this sig of which you speak?
For those who bitch 3 keys are useless: These are 3 choices at a time, not 3 fixed choices all the time. You can create any menu-based user interface using it. Most have 4 keys ("up", "down", "OK/Enter", "Cancel/Leave" (usually found in cell phones). Still it can be done with 3 keys, if you give up "Cancel" and replace it with a menu position - My beeper had an interface like that, worked fine - or leave out "Up" and just cycle through the whole list with "Down" every time.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
I would buy the full keyboard. I do graphics and I used so many different programs that unless its a short cut I use all the time I just can not remember them all. So if this thing automatically updated as I switched between apps I would be in freaking heaven. My question would be, It would be up to the software maker to make there app display on the keyboard right? I already am using a keyboard made for final cut pro. I don't know. I would buy this thing yesterday if does the above.
OMG Ponies!!! with Glitter!!!! I miss Pink
If I got this I would probably have to drop out of school and quit my job because I'd spend all my time making games that use the keyboard as its screen and controller.
If they plan to sell any it will definetly be below 1,000... did you want brussel sprouts or lima beans?
From the article:
:)
"Organic light-emitting diodes (OLED) in our screens last for 5000 hours of continuous use. The screen saving mode is designed to extend the keyboards lifetime."
So after a year or so, the keyboard fails and I have to buy a new one? What a great market if you can convince all those Mac users to give you money every year the same way they do Steve Jobs..
No thanks.. I'll stick with my Fujitsu 4726.
Now, if they fail to deliver the product EVER, that's a crime.
Technically, for mail order at least, they have 30 days to ship from the time they take your payment unless they specifically tell you otherwise in advance. This is the FTC's "Mail or Telephone Order Merchandise Trade Regulation Rule" and it's a pretty big deal for mail order companies to follow.
"The Rule requires that when you advertise merchandise, you must have a reasonable basis for stating or implying that you can ship within a certain time. If you make no shipment statement, you must have a reasonable basis for believing that you can ship within 30 days."
Basically if you fail to ship in 30 days you have to obtain the customer's explicit consent to keep their money until you can ship or you must refund their payment.
I don't see in TFA any details about actually making a pre-order so I don't know what they promise in this case, although they say "Keyboards ready for shipment will arrive on May 15" but that doesn't mean they'll have enough to actually fulfill all pre-orders.
with the OLEDs being rated at 5000 hours of use, that's less then 2 years at 8 hours a day of usage. i'll pass on round one.
sigs suck
Okay, so it only has three keys, but I think this can still be useful if you just use them in a more efficient manner.
One idea I had was, like others have suggested, using it to launch commonly used applications. But why only limit it to only three? Simply set the device up where if you quickly tap the first or third button, all three buttons will change into the next/previous set of applications, all in groups of three. If you want to launch an application, simply hold the button down just slightly longer (less than half a second). This way you can cycle through as many apps as you wish. Just an idea.
Very cool. But expensive and apparently the OLEDs last only 5000 hours.
You're describing a credit based system; VISA here mostly run debit cards. You're describing a day-by-day system; everything here is online, and the banks cooperate. The money is directly deducted from your bank account at the moment we capture.
Eivind.
Doubting the existence of evolution is like doubting the existence of China: It just shows that you're uninformed.
Just one question about the "screensaver" feature: Which yields the longest lifespan for the OLED displays -- staying lit, or turning on/off frequently? I can imagine that, with a very aggressive screensaver setting the keys may light/dim many hundreds of thousands of cycles. Is this better than staying on all the time?
Oh, and what about power consumption? Will this thing need a wall wart?
Image this technology for an universal remote control. Touchscreen remote controls are flexible, but lack the tactile feel. With touchscreens, you cannot "feel" your way across the remote. With this technology, you could build a remote with real buttons whose labels change depending on the device you are controlling.
at $30/key, i for one am not welcoming the new optimus overlord.. my keyboard has upward of 100 keys.. even if they manage to make these suckers 10 times cheaper, thats still twice what my graphics card cost.
It is a great idea (assuming it ships etc) but the price is gonna have to fall a long way to get my interest
-AlexC
Just what we need. Now instead of hiring people who can read we just program the buttons to show Hamburger, fries and Coke. No need for pesky reading skills, just push the right picture!
I would think that adding a OLED display to the Fingerworks Touchstream keyboard would be the most ultimate keyboard ever! Maybe they who purchased Fingerworks is thinking the same thing?
Anyone notice how the Figureworks keyboard are selling for over $700 on eBay? Wow!
The above is not worth reading.
A keyboard seems like a really good application for E-Ink (electronic paper). It is low power, it doesn't require a high refresh rate.
"It's because they're stupid, that's why. That's why everybody does everything." -Homer Simpson
Sear's may have an auto capture for authorized transactions, but just because an auth went through does not mean it will be automatically captured at the end of the day. It's not the card associations that perform the capture, but the merchant or processor.
It's quite common for a processor to offer a single pass transaction type (auth, and if approved automatically capture and settle the transaction), but two pass transactions are used by savvy merchants to reduce chargeback risks.
But back to your GP post, if someone offers a pre-order and stipulates that you'll be charged in advance, that's valid by most association rules.
this after visiting the Art Lebedev website.
Maybe they should think about renaming the "Login/Lock For Windows Users" function.
Let's keep in mind that these guys are in Russia. US consumer protection laws really don't apply.
Is buying a Harley Davidson as your first motorcycle since you were 16 at age 49 a midlife crisis issue?
According to this picture (13.8 MB, are you kidding me?) Artemy Lebedev uses what appears to be a Microsoft Natural Pro keyboard. I hope that since the designer is concerned about ergonomics that they release an ergonomic version of the Optimus as well.
Under the "Description" section they show the "mini" keyboard and a small picture of a full size keyboard with measurements of width=118 mm, depth=51.8 mm, height=18 mm, key=32×32 mm; that's clearly a regular-sized keyboard. So are they taking pre-orders for the mini plus regular keyboards?
Well, under "Answers" they show a big drawing of a regular keyboard (which will apparently be released at the end of 2006), and the mini, which is claimed to be ready for release in May 2006. Directly under this graphic of both devices is the following text:
This makes me guess that maybe I'm just getting 3 keys for $100 in May. Maybe. Then again, maybe I get the 3 keys in May, and the rest for Christmas. Dunno.
And what are the capabilities of the big keyboard? Will every key have the dynamic keycaps, or will just a small bank of special keys have this capability? I'd love to have a keyboard with dynamic keycaps--I've wanted one for a long time. But is this what they are working on? Dunno.
I'm just guessing (in the absence of facts), but could it be that I'm being asked to underwrite the development of the big keyboard by just buying 3 keys for a hundred bucks in may? I don't theeeeenk so.
Great men are almost always bad men--Lord Acton's Corollary
I don't think this keyboard would be useful for many people. I don't know for sure, but I expect that most of us who use keyboards much don't look at them while typing anyway. So what do I care what is on each key? Even if switching languages frequently a touch typist has no use for this. And by the way the location and size of the enter key is not normal, so it would actually make it harder for me to type. This is a product that sounds cool but is actually useless.
The most important keys in vi can also be mapped to 3 keys.
Esc : q
Old people fall. Young people spring. Rich people summer and winter.
This looks like a very nice concept. I am not sure how many keys can a keyboard hold as these seem to be a bit too large. If these keys are made any smaller, then the image won't be diplayed properly. Even so, it can be a nice to have thing during presentations and meetings.
I know the world exists because I exist.
This is not vapourware, pre-orders are being take now with a cut price until April 2nd.
My antigravity-driven, cold-fusion propelled aircraft isn't vaporware either. Hey, I can prove it: I'm taking pre-orders. Just transfer $100 into my bank account to make sure you get it as soon as it ships.
Dammit, I say put this thing on ThinkGeek for a week and run banners for it here on Slashdot. I've already mailed the picture to three people - all who have light kits in their PC's. Even if they lose money on every sale this will be the fastest moving "mod" product in a decade. Everyone will want a damn full size after that.
...
It's not about profits, it's about cash flow; as illustrated by this chart:
1. Design kickass keyboard.
2. Size it down.
3.
4. Cash Flow!
Amazon, eBay, RedHat, *.com (oops) and so forth...
Get your Unix fortune now!
Eivind.
Doubting the existence of evolution is like doubting the existence of China: It just shows that you're uninformed.
One of the three keys with two hot girls in white tank tops, with the words "Now Playing" written on top of them? Hmmmm, wonder what that key is programmed for...
Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
Why not just have a large touchscreen the size of a keyboard with a bumpmap outline of a keyboard layered on the top so you can still feel the difference between keys.
This is doable with todays technology and requires less costs until OLEDs are more refined.
I don't understand why they don't consider E-Ink for the Key Labels... sure, it doesn't look quite as flashy as those OLEDs, but I'm sure it lasts longer than 5000 hours and color E-Ink might be developed as well some day...
which might make it quite useful.
Though maybe better intial offerings would be:
A monochrome one thats cheaper and alst longer
A screen without buttons, that just lets you know when mail arrives, or other events..
I've seen SONY make modular implementations of the same idea quite a while ago.
It kind of reminds me of Douglas Engelbarts "Mother of All Demos", where he had an extra keyboard with five large keys on his left, which would provide some sort of function-key input, that could handle combinations, and I think was relative to the current content.
This would probably live large, if Microsoft had combined it with it's new approach to Results-based user interfaces in Office 12, but you'd need way more than three keys for that.
Remember Simon? Just take out the yellow key, and map it onto the three keys of this thing, and you have a little game. On the full keyboard, you could orient the keyboard so there's a person at each side, and map backtick/left shift and backspace/right shift to paddle controls, and have a game of pong between the two sides. Or you could have a whack-a-mole-like game, where keys light up and you have to hit them as quickly as possible. Does anyone else see the great potential here for game developers? I can even imagine games being integrated across the main monitor and the Optimus, sort of like the DS. The only hindrance for these ideas is that the Optimus' keys aren't arranged in a grid, but that can be worked around. This would be a non-issue for, say, Hearn sliding-coin puzzles, which are arranged in arbitrary graph configurations.
Psi Xi
Doesn't Hasbro have a lock on the "Optimus" name?